In this research, we design and implement a new MMI description language named MrailsScript from the software engineering point of view. MrailsScript consists of the datamodel definition that can be inherited from semantic web class definition, and the annotations of interaction task and dialogue initiative. By expanding the existing web application development framework, our Mrails framework can automatically generate prototype codes of MMI application which is based on MVC (Model-View-Controller) model. We also implemented a helper application of MMI system development, MrailsBuilder, which assists coding of MrailsScript and realizes multilingual capability of the target MMI system.

Task-oriented dialogue agents efficiently solve a problem by communication. By incorporating open-domain conversation or chat functionality to the agent, it is possible for the user to increase their affection to the agent and to maintain the motivation of doing tasks. In addition, it may help the novice user to acquire the good usage of speech interface. However, it is generally difficult to combine a task-oriented dialogue system and a chat system because of the difference of dialogue management method of these two types. In addition, it is necessary to determine whether the user's utterance intends a chat dialogue or a task-oriented dialogue and which tasks are intended. Furthermore, if the user continues a chat dialogue in spite of the existence of an urgent task, the system needs to propose the task to the user. To solve this problem, we designed and implemented a development framework which has a switching functionality of a dialogue management with a little burden to developers. We examined the efficacy of the proposed framework via an example system development.